Hope you all are doing well. Habits of life keep me off the social media.
My buddy and I have a yearly tradition of going after frogs every year we try to keep going, he is still stationed elsewhere but we managed to do our annual trip a couple of weeks ago.
I am unsure of why, but I seen more muskrats on that trip than several years of night fishing and adventures combined. We covered the same grounds as many years past- usually seeing 20 or so in a night, but this time it’s of no exaggeration, I bet I seen over a 100. It actually had me pull my traps out and get them ready.
I’ve never seen “litters” of them before either, I bet a quarter of them were no bigger than an actual rat- some of them in groups (had no idea they traveled in packs).
I’ve seen some of you all mention in the past talking about their decline, just figured I’d share there may be a turn for them (on the river systems at the least)
I myself will only be targeting enough to have a few dinners- I missed having them last year.
I’m starting to see some rodent return don’t under stand exactly why groundhogs muskrats and real rats. Makes me wonder if it has something to do with ddt like they always said where nearing the 50 year mark of when people started scaling back its use. Could be it’s finally purged from the ecosystem.
Groundhogs have exploded in my area and I have noticed muskrats in water bodies that are isolated and pretty small not lots of them though we’ve had drought for 3 years.
Makes you wonder.
I had not thought about the DDT! I have always thought that as soon as all the Farmers went to No till / Spraying and planting though, instead of the old ways of plowing and discing fields, was the same time that muskrats, and white bass runs all but disappeared in just a few years time! It wasn’t long after that when I started noticing that the Bull frog populations started going down fast too! Quail numbers crashed about that time as well! I can’t help but think that there is a connection! A lot of Service Men in Viet -Nam were messed up by the Agent Orange, as well as their kids when they came back home , and started a Family! I figure a lot of what they spray these days is just a watered down version of it!